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Publication ‘Now for Our Irish Wars’ – Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman and the Irish Dramatic Canon(Routledge, 2020-11-22) Lonergan, PatrickThis article explores the Irish features of Jez Butterworth’s _The Ferryman_, focussing on his use of overfamiliar Irish tropes as well as his intertextual allusions to writers such as Brian Friel, WB Yeats, and Seamus Heaney. These links are considered in the context of its first production, in 2017-18, which appeared at a time when the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the UK was being fiercely debated. The article considers the critical reaction to that production, asking why _The Ferryman_ was so frequently described as an ‘Irish’ play. To respond to that question, the article explores the two forms of cultural transmission that are detectable in the play: the influence of Irish drama upon Butterworth’s own practice as a playwright, and the way in which his characters’ actions are over-determined by the repetition of family stories and traditions across several generations. Butterworth’s decision to explore the influence of the Irish dramatic tradition on his own writing demonstrates that there are ways to reach into the past in order to find new ways forward. In the act of writing _The Ferryman_, Butterworth is offering a response to the dilemma that the play itself dramatizes. The political and artistic consequences of that strategy need to be considered, as does the way in which _The Ferryman_ builds on themes and tropes present in Butterworth's earlier plays.Publication ‘It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home …’: Beckett as national performance(Intellect, 2020-12-01) Lonergan, PatrickThis article explores how nations such as Ireland interact with each other ‐ and seek to understand themselves ‐ by appropriating theatre-makers and other artists, using them to perform versions of that nation to the outside world. This topic is considered through an exploration of the Irish state’s appropriation of Samuel Beckett as an icon that represents positive images of Irishness both within and beyond Ireland. This process is explored from shortly after Beckett’s death in 1989 to the launch in 2012 of an Irish navy vessel named the LÉ Samuel Beckett. The treatment of Beckett during that period is considered in the context of a broader discussion of nation-branding in Ireland. This is presented in an outline history of the Irish state’s performance of itself through its artists, which are discussed in relation to the appearance of Irish writers on banknotes during the twentieth century, among other brief examples related to the work of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. The article concludes by considering some of the methodological challenges that arise in an investigation of national performance.Publication ‘A Twisted, Looping Form’ Staging dark ecologies in Ella Hickson’s Oil(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2020-06-01) Lonergan, PatrickIn Dark Ecology (2016), Timothy Morton argues that one of the challenges presented by the impact of human activity upon the environment is that [w]e are faced with the task of thinking at temporal and spatial scales that are unfamiliar, even monstrously gigantic (25). The advent of the Anthropocene era thus requires us to understand the agency of the individual in the context of a geological epoch that will persist for thousands of generations, and which seems likely to outlast the human species itself. This paper considers how theatrical form is being used to register the sense of weirdness (to use Morton s word) that arises from this awareness, exploring representations of stage time in plays that dramatize ecological themes. These include work by Mike Bartlett and Caryl Churchill, but the primary focus is on Ella Hickson s Oil (2016), a play that explores humanity s shifting approaches to carbon-based energy from the late 1890s to the early 2050s, but which has a protagonist whose age increases only by approximately sixty years during that period. By using stage time metonymically to consider the relationship between the length of a human life and the progression of the natural world over centuries, Hickson shows that one function of art in the Anthropocene might be to demonstrate the impact of human activity across monstrously gigantic spans of time and space. She also explores how the concept of theatrical realism may be an impediment to the formation of a necessary ecological awareness, demonstrating how experimental approaches to theatrical form may offer us new ways of understanding contemporary environmental and political concerns. By placing those achievements in the context of Morton s ideas about looping and weirdness, the paper concludes that that Hickson s Oil is using theatrical form to think deeply about dark ecology and its temporal consequences.Publication Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels and anti-Irish prejudice(Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas, 2007) Lonergan, PatrickIt is by now taken as axiomatic that representations of Irish characters in Victorian literature were generally negative. However, as Roy Foster shows, they were not universally so; we find one example of a positive treatment of Ireland and the Irish in Victorian writing in Anthony Trollope's "Palliser series" of six political novels, which appeared between 1864 and 1880. In addition to having an Irishman as the hero of its second and fourth titles, Phineas Finn (1869) and Phineas Redux (1873), the series also anatomizes one of the most important periods in Irish political history, stretching roughly from Disestablishment in 1869 to the founding of the Land League in 1879. The most significant aspect of the Palliser series, though, may be its careful analysis of anti-Irish prejudice and stereotyping, carried out as part of the six books' consideration of prejudicial representations of those who do not conform to Victorian norms. The theme of prejudice dominates the Palliser series. Having lived in Ireland from 1841 to 1859—and having published three books on Irish themes before he began the Palliser novels, Trollope was well aware of how the Irish suffered such prejudice. The Palliser series can thus be seen as an attempt to challenge Irish stereotypes in general, while offering a distinctive treatment of two of the most common images of Irishness: the Stage Irishman and the presentation of Ireland as a feminized victim.Publication ‘Great Joys Were My Share Always’: Ibsenite echoes in Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows(International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL) Japan, 2017) Lonergan, Patrick[No abstract available]Publication 'Perform, or Else!'(ISTR Irish Society for Theatre Research, 2014) Haughton, Miriam; Kurdi, MariaThis latest issue of Irish Theatre International bridges the discourses of theatre practice and research with that of performance studies, and also with the ways in which social, economic, political and cultural activities perform their needs and demands. Recent decades honed these links through the ‘turn to performance’ markedly explored in the US since the 1960s, as ideas of play, ritual, and performativity flowered and cross-pollinated the humanities and indeed, scientific disciplines, crossing shores and attracting a global reach. This bridge specifically locates these interdisciplinary enquiries in the context of neoliberal economic cultures pervading the western world and further afield, produced and managed under the costume of ‘freedom’. Neoliberal engineers and advocates argue for the economic and social benefits such policies offer, foregrounding their argument around the notion of ‘freedom’. Freedom is a human right, a moral imperative, and a symbol of progress in civilization. As David Harvey summarizes, ‘The founding figures of neoliberal thought took political ideals of human dignity and individual freedom as fundamental, as “the central values of civilization” […] These values, they held, were threatened not only by fascism, dictatorships, and communism, but by all forms of state intervention that substituted collective judgements for those of individuals free to choose’ (A Brief History of Neoliberalism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], p. 5).Publication A pacifist rage: Martin McDonagh's Hangmen(Royal Court Theatre, 2015) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication A loss that makes us richer?(The Irish Times, 2003-04-29) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication Digging around in the past for a glimpse of the future(The Irish Times, 2013-04-22) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication Home is where the heart is - and the drama too(The Irish Times, 2015-01-03) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication Better by design: the art of theatre: Irish theatrescapes: new Irish plays, adapted European plays and Irish classics(The Irish Times, 2016-01-23) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|This work, as well as being beautifully illustrated, succeeds as a memoir, an anthology and as an outstanding act of theatre criticism, writes Patrick Lonergan.Publication Bolger abandons tradition to chronicle tower life in all its darkness and beauty: BOOK OF THE DAY(The Irish Times, 2010-05-28) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication Stained Glass at Samhain: Town Hall, Galway(The Irish Times, 2002-11-02) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication Speaking Out: The Tricyle Theatre's Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry(Irish Theatre Magazine, 2005) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication “Old Fools are Babes Again”: Shakespeare at the Abbey Theatre: programme note for King Lear directed by Selina Cartmell at the Abbey Theatre(Abbey Theatre, 2013) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication The Last Summer by Declan Hughes: programme note for Gate Theatre, Dublin(Gate Theatre, 2012) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication Re-imagining Shakespeare: A tender thing directed by Selina Cartmell: programme note for Siren Productions(Siren Productions, 2013) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication The Match Box by Frank McGuinness: programme note for Galway International Arts Festival(Galway International Arts Festival, 2015) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication The New Electric Ballroom by Enda Walsh, Druid Theatre, Galway(Irish Theatre Magazine, 2008) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|[No abstract available]Publication All that Fall by Samuel Beckett, Pan Pan Theatre Company(Irish Theatre Magazine, 2011) Lonergan, Patrick; |~|The first thing to say about Pan Pan’s performance of Beckett’s 1956 radio play is this: if you’re planning on going to it, please don’t read this review – it would be a shame to spoil the surprise that awaits you. And perhaps the second important point is how refreshing (and unusual) it is to be surprised by an Irish production of a play by Beckett – a writer whose works are usually treated so reverentially that they’re in danger of becoming museum pieces. While this is a very faithful rendition of the play, Pan Pan provide an experience that is genuinely different from anything you’ll have encountered in the theatre before.
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